Phil Sim, a professional with technology editor journalist background, has written three interesting blog posts recently, discussing the much-rumored Google OS (1, 2, 3). He speculates that all user's data will be stored online on Google's servers and so one's desktop and files can be retrieved exactly as left by any other PC station, anywhere in the world, by simply using his Gmail credentials. It's like having your OS on a usb key with you at all times, only, without the usb key...

You don't have to wait for applications to launch anymore, but you will wait for data to come through

That, to me, is the key point of any online OS; data availability and access. For such an OS to be successful it would have to offer improvements over "normal" desktop usage.

With GMail, Google Suggest and Google News they are offering an awful lot of information condensed into their perception of what you need right now; kind of like Nat F et al's Dashboard. An Online OS from Google would be able to offer the benefit of local applications (executed locally = faster), but with an online backup of your data (log into any Google OS and have the same "desktop" a la roaming profiles), and the benefits of searching against a data farm rather than a 7200rpm disk (executed remotely = faster).

Google may be using Ubuntu (see the Goobuntu discussion from before) as a base due to its pretty good hardware detection at every boot, and its basis on Debian (the free-est of linux cultures). Apart from support for Hardware, and decent apps to get people started, the rest can be web based, or at least use AJAX/DHTML and other effects to offer a client via the browser. Remember Google are also developing GTalk support in Gaim - a thick client - and also have interests in Firefox.

I personally see the future of such a project, assuming it is real, as exciting. It's more than Web 2.0, offering a very simple solution to a really complicated concept - an online, always accessible "workspace".